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Red Bull driver Sergio Perez hilariously trolled his race engineer after he hit a bird heading into the final corner of the FP1 session at the Shanghai International Circuit for the 2024 Chinese GP on Friday.
The Mexican driver, like many, was going about their run plans in the all-important FP1 session. It is the only practice session of the weekend as the Chinese GP is the first Sprint weekend of the season. Perez finished P4 behind his teammate Max Verstappen in the session, 0.388 seconds behind Lance Stroll in P1.
Drivers were wary of stopping unplanned and losing precious track time. However, Sergio Perez's reason for heading into the pits in between his run plan was very unique and comical.
The Red Bull driver hit a bird after the pit straight and informed his team. He said on his team radio to his race engineer:
"I got a bird. I hit a bird."
His race engineer, Hugh Bird, sympathized with his charge and replied:
"Ouch.. So box and we will check for a bird!"
However, Perez showed no sympathy in return and stated:
"Yeah.. your brother!"
Sergio Perez previews the Chinese GP this weekend
Sergio Perez stated that there were a lot of 'uncertainties' heading into the Chinese GP weekend as the sport hadn't raced in Shanghai for five years due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Speaking to Motorsport, the Red Bull driver said:
"There are so many uncertainties with the tarmac, it's been five years since something has been here. So, it will be an interesting FP1 and we'll see from there. Obviously, it looks like a front-limited circuit, where potentially we can struggle a little bit more.
"We've learned a lot from Melbourne, we have some understanding of things we did over there, so we just have to remain optimistic. If we were to be in the same boat, hopefully with the things we've learned we can have a much better resilience to the graining."
Sergio Perez pointed out out that he had 'never driven a Red Bull around this circuit so that'll be good fun'. He also claimed that although this is a challenging circuit they've shown that they have a car to compete in most places with the RB20.
The Mexican would hope that he is in contention for the pole position in the Sprint qualifying later in the day as it would be the perfect start for him in China.
